MARINE SECURITY HANDOFF MOVING FORWARD

Afghan troops step up with mixed results; U.S. officers are cautiously optimistic

HELMAND PROVINCE, Afghanistan 
As about half the Marine force in Afghanistan headed home this year, the rapid drawdown in the violent southwest of the country cast the endgame of the war and what many regard as its precarious footing into relief — the handoff to Afghan national security forces.

Helmand province, a nexus of the narcotics trade in the heartland of the Taliban insurgency, has borne much of the heaviest fighting of the 11-year war. In recent years, this fertile river valley traversing the desert has also been a killing field for a disproportionate number of Marines among coalition deaths nationwide.

Now it may be a bellwether for the country as Afghan troops fight on with far less U.S. military assistance.

U-T San Diego spent five weeks this summer embedded with Marines in Helmand province, for the third time since 2010. From the commanding general down, most said they were either cautiously confident or were taking a wait-and-see approach to the handoff.

Among the undecided was an infantry lieutenant from San Diego who offered a blunt assessment of the Afghan soldiers he works with. “Some days I think: They’re (screwed),” he said, asking not to be named so he could speak frankly.

On other days and other battles, when Afghan national troops mow down scores of insurgents, he reconsiders: “They have their good days and their bad days. Only time will tell. As lazy as they fight on a daily basis, the Taliban are lazy, too.”

Growing pains

A common saying among the Marine command staff in Helmand province is “it takes six years to make a sixth-grader.” By the time most international troops pull out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the Marines in NATO’s southwestern region will have had less time than that to help the Afghan army stand on its own.

The Corps began deploying to Helmand in strength in 2009 after redirecting from Iraq. In 2010, the Afghan army corps it helped start from scratch in Helmand, the 215th, was established.

This summer, relations with Afghans they mentor and assist ranged from disdainful to outright hostile.

Amid a rising spate of insider attacks on NATO troops nationwide, tensions were so high at one Musa Qala base after offhand comments by Afghan police about “shooting Marines,” that their advisers from Camp Pendleton temporarily stopped patrolling with them.

The rapport was little better at another combat outpost in Sangin, where the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment from Twentynine Palms is deployed.

Staff Sgt. Trent Templet, a 32-year-old platoon sergeant, had heard about “rock star” Afghan troops at other positions. But he was convinced that commanders were sticking his company with all their bad apples.

Dawn was already breaking when the Afghan soldiers showed up late for an all-day operation. “The tactical advantage is definitely gone at this point,” another Marine griped as they waited.

A few hours into the 14-hour patrol, the Afghan troops started complaining that they were tired and wanted to return to base. They kept up the lament until the operation ended at sunset.

“They can bitch all they want. We’re not going back,” Templet said on the radio.

When the Marines patted down a young man who approached them on the road as they interviewed occupants of a nearby home, the Afghan soldier in charge of the search element grew irate. Sgt. Hezbollah (who uses one name) strode over and hollered at the Marines.

“Why did you search them?” he demanded, according to a translation for Templet.

Among themselves, the Marines mockingly called the Afghan sergeant GI Joe. Hezbollah refused to wear a helmet over his Justin Bieber-style hairdo. Instead of ballistic eye protection, he wore flashy sunglasses. “He is garbage,” Templet said.

He gritted his teeth and calmly told the interpreter to let Hezbollah know: “If I need to search the people I am talking to for my own security, I will. Tell him!”

Later, when Hezbollah strolled by munching on a snack he had plucked from a vineyard, the Marine platoon sergeant muttered sarcastically: “Eating grapes on patrol. … Yeah, they’re really going to succeed when we leave. I feel 100 percent confident.”

Betrayal

So-called green-on-blue attacks by disgruntled or turncoat Afghan troops on their international allies are fraying trust at a critical phase in the war. For Camp Pendleton’s 1st Marine Special Operations Battalion, an apparent insider attack took a tragic toll on personnel in the Puzeh area of Sangin when three were killed and a fourth wounded — about a quarter of the size of a typical special operations team, not including support troops.

Although initial reports of the incident varied, a critical skills operator on the team who spoke to eyewitnesses said the Marines had just finished a shura security meeting in the predawn darkness Aug. 10 when an Afghan man appeared unescorted at their tactical operations center.

He was dressed like a member of the Afghan Local Police — villagers the Marines train to fight the Taliban. Only Afghans they know and trust are allowed into the inner sanctum of the base, and always with an escort. Gunnery Sgt. Ryan Jeschke, team chief at Puzeh, was immediately suspicious, the operator recounted.

Jeschke brought the Afghan man into the operations center and asked if anyone recognized him. When team leader Capt. Matt Manoukian and others said no, Jeschke led him out to the foyer.

The Afghan man grabbed a rifle and shot Jeschke in the back and continued shooting through the thin plywood into the operations center, fatally wounding Manoukian and Staff Sgt. Sky R. Mote, an explosive ordnance disposal technician.

Within two hours after the mass shooting, the operations center was cleaned of blood and the Marines were back to work, hunting for the attacker and continuing their “village stability operations” mission. The special operations forces team had helped the local militia kill several prominent Taliban commanders in Puzeh that summer. As the deaths of the three Marines underscored, there was much more to be done.

“If you just sit there and dwell on it, it’s only going to get worse,” said the operator, who deployed previously in combat with the three dead Marines and was close friends with them. “It is very traumatic, but the number one point of the team is to accomplish the mission, though it sounds cliché. That’s what all three guys would have wanted.”

Trust

By contrast, at the Musa Qala district headquarters, where Camp Pendleton’s 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment is deployed, the rapport among the Marines and Afghans was obvious. When Charles Breaux, 26, of San Diego, was promoted to captain this summer, the Afghans he advises on logistics matters threw him a party.

The soldiers wore their camouflage uniforms as usual and posed for pictures with Breaux dressed in a sparkly cap over his close-shaved Marine haircut and the local garb of long shirt and trousers.

After feasting around a long plastic cloth rolled out on the floor piled with plates of lamb, rice, mango, watermelon and other foods, the dancing began.

To the beat of the drum and a small lutelike instrument, the Afghans shimmied and spun in place and the Marines stomped down the line of floor cushions. An Afghan interpreter whooped his encouragement with a traditional Marine motivational slogan, yelling “Get some!”

“These guys are amazing. You really make some good friends out here,” Breaux said. Then growing a little somber, he added: “At the end of the day, these guys still have to stay here and fight when you go home. It’s just one of those things … You love them.”

Walking point

Marines and sailors stationed in Helmand province began preparing for the handoff last year, long before the outflow of equipment and personnel peaked in August as the “surge” of extra troops withdraws. The difference in this summer’s fighting season was stark.

A security patrol that stepped outside the gates of Forward Operating Base Jackson one July morning in Sangin included 10 Afghan soldiers and just four Marines. Instead of tagging along behind a larger Marine force, Afghan troops planned the two-hour mission themselves and walked point, sweeping ahead for roadside bombs.

The soldiers and their Marine advisers moved through the bazaar and into lush fields of flowering okra and winding mud-walled alleys along the river. The Afghan patrol leader scanned his eyes in all directions for threats as his soldiers spread out in a single file, limiting the impact of potential roadside bombs.

The Marine in charge of advising the patrol, Cpl. Joseph Brandt, would have liked them to vary their route more and avoid potentially bomb-laden paths, but overall, he was pleased.

The 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment assigned a company of 191 infantrymen and military police to advise Afghan forces — triple the number of the previous battalion.

Even as they reposition themselves at arm’s length overwatching Afghan forces in Helmand province, the Marines continue to provide surveillance blimps and air support, heavier firepower and electronic jamming devices disabling remote-controlled explosive devices. When it comes to their military tactics, however, “sometimes we integrate into their operations, but more and more we leave it all to them,” Brandt said as he walked with the Afghan soldiers.

Sgt. Gull Mohammad, 19, led the patrol with quiet seriousness. Mohammad has a fourth-grade education and seven months’ experience as a soldier.

He joined the army to support his impoverished family and pay his fiancée’s family for her hand in marriage. He is illiterate but studying reading and writing with his fellow soldiers.

After returning to base, Mohammad said, “My responsibility is to make sure there are no people missing legs or getting killed. If an IED (improvised explosive device) blows up, it is my fault, because I didn’t protect them.”

Another soldier patrolling that day, Gamshed Mohammad, 24, is experienced with rocket-propelled grenades, artillery, driving and mechanics. During his three years in the army, “I have seen a lot of changes. The first time I came into Sangin district we couldn’t walk that path, from here to Gumbatty. Now we can walk safely,” he said. The interview was interrupted, however, when the soldiers were tasked as a quick reaction force for Afghan police cordoning off several roadside bombs.

Later that month, the same group battled insurgents in a 12-hour firefight along the river. The Afghan soldiers were struck by four roadside bombs but used combat lifesaver skills from a recent first-aid class to save the lives of two seriously wounded soldiers, one of whom lost both legs.

The Marines evacuated casualties and sent in more of their own forces as backup for the Afghan soldiers during the firefight. “Their security was good. They were up front the whole time. We were just supporting them,” Brandt reported later.

Eventually the hand-holding will end, and the Afghans will have to go it largely alone. An early test case in the more violent northern half of Helmand province unfolded in April in Now Zad, where the company of Marines responsible for securing the town was replaced by a handful of advisers.

The handoff to Afghan forces made him nervous, admitted Lt. Col. Jason Perry, 42, of Flat Rock, N.C., commanding officer of 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. He wondered: Is my battalion going to be the one that loses Now Zad to the Taliban?

“If this fails, this will become the Taliban model for the future,” he said. But there’s been little or no increase in violence and no Afghan positions overrun by insurgents in Now Zad, he said. “The sky’s not falling, the wheels are not coming off the cart,” he said. The Afghan national security forces have “been extremely adaptive to the new security realities — that we are leaving.”

Way ahead

During an interview at Camp Leatherneck, Maj. Gen. Charles M. Gurganus, the Camp Pendleton Marine in command of U.S. and international forces in southwestern Afghanistan, said, “I think there’s a chance, a fair chance, that this will all work.”

The day when his Afghan army counterpart in Helmand province looks at him and says: Hey, we got it, “honestly, I don’t think it’s that far off. ...”

“We were concerned about just their sheer will to take this fight on. But they are clearly taking casualties, and they’re not walking off the job. They are not quitting,” he said.

The Taliban, “they’re not finished,” Gurganus said. “There is plenty of fight and plenty of life left in them. But slowly, (Afghans) are starting to get more confidence in their own people and in their own forces. And I think they’re starting to gain more confidence in their own abilities to stand up against the insurgents.

“We’ve seen that in Sangin and certainly in Marja,” he said, naming two fierce battlegrounds in Helmand province that saw steep drops in violence in recent years.

The commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. James Amos, flew in a tilt-rotor Osprey to the Kajaki Dam in mid-July to visit artillerymen guarding the strategic asset.

One Marine asked what will become of Afghanistan after the last Marines leave.

By the end of 2014, “we’re basically done,” Amos said. “What do we see with the Afghan National Security Forces? … Are they going to be able to hack it? And what do we see in Helmand? The real question is how about all the gains, are we going to lose that?

“I’m bullish. I think we’re going to do it,” Amos said.

“I know we are,” Gurganus said to himself in a curt and steely voice, striding away at the end of their talk.